How's Your One Minute Sales Pitch?

Lois Geller
, ContributorI write about marketing, with a focus on results.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Whether you’re Warren Buffet or the owner of Warren’s Buffet & Sandwich Shop, it can’t hurt to have a one minute sales pitch polished and ready to let rip at a moment’s notice. You never know.

A lot of people still call it the “Elevator Pitch”. The idea is that you and a potential client “accidentally” get into the same elevator and you have less than a minute to get her attention and persuade her to talk some more.

But a short sales pitch can be useful anywhere. A week or so ago, a man emailed his Elevator Pitch and asked me to read and comment on it. At least it was short, which is the essence of the one minute sales pitch. I changed all the names and locations, and here it is:

Hi! I’m Joe Jackson, President of Jackson Protection Services, a progressive, full service security company in Des Moines, offering armed and unarmed uniformed service. We pride ourselves on delivering the highest level of service with some of the most competitive rates in the industry. Through our rigorous hiring and training standards we have adopted, our officers are set apart from the norm. In the next year we would like to double our business through partnering with quality organizations that are in need of a dynamic security provider to help protect them from today's criminal.

I wrote to him suggesting that he change the focus from him to the prospect, shorten it some more, get rid of irrelevancies like doubling his business and partnering … ask for the order (in this case a longer meeting) and promise something useful, like information. This might work.

Good morning. I’m Joe Jackson of Jackson Protection Services, a full service security agency in Des Moines. We deliver high level service with crackerjack licensed security personnel, armed or not. A lot of them are ex-police officers, army or marine noncoms. Our rates are a lot lower than you’d think. I’d love to fill you in if you ever have 15 or 20 minutes for a meeting. How about later this week? I’ll bring some case studies of the latest tricks criminals are up to.

My all time favorite one minute pitch

Years ago, a Canadian friend told me a fascinating story that may or may not be apocryphal. I hope it’s true.

About a hundred years back, the President of the Canadian Pacific Railway was walking through Montreal’s Windsor Station with his entourage when a man approached.

“Say,” he began confidently, “if I could save the CPR five hundred thousand dollars in two years, would you pay me fifty thousand dollars?”

The President nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Well, I’ve noticed that all your freight cars are painted with the words Canadian Pacific Railway in huge letters. Anyone can see it’s a railway. I’ve done some calculating and I estimate that it costs you about $500,000 in paint and manpower every two years just to paint the useless word railway. All you need is the phrase ‘Canadian Pacific’.”